


How the Turntables

by allypsis



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Daylighter Simon Lewis, F/M, Human Angel (BtVS), Hunter's Moon Bar (Shadowhunter Chronicles), I don't even know if this is going anywhere, I haven't written in forever, M/M, Multi, Post-Series, Shanshu Prophecy, heartbroken Raphael (he won't admit it), heartbroken Spike, ignores the comics, mixing lore, more characters will be added, okay bye sorry, playing with mythos, suicidal Spike, this is not the fic I should be working on, well for Angel and Buffy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-09 12:22:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12276384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allypsis/pseuds/allypsis
Summary: There’s a not-quite unfamiliar vampire, sitting at the bar.





	1. Would you mind if I called you Angel?

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when you're going back and forth between bingewatching Shadowhunters and Angel.  
> I'm so, so sorry.

There’s a not-quite unfamiliar vampire, sitting at the bar. Something about the light glinting off the peroxide-dyed blond hair, slicked back with too much gel, strikes a chord, but not one that Raphael knows well enough to hum along to. 

Still, this is his territory, and he has a duty.

“Nice place, isn’t it?” he says, smooth, slotting into the spot next to him. The beta bartender places a glass of blood down in front of him without him having to order, and he raises it towards the other vampire. When he looks at him, there’s something about his blue eyes that makes Raphael a little nervous. His expression never changes, of course.

“Changed a bit since I was here last,” the older—and he is older, not just physically, but in years—vampire replies, lifting his own plasma shot, “but it has a certain charm. No blooming onions, though.”

Raphael—doesn’t know what that means. Instead of responding to it, he raises one eyebrow. “When were you here last?”

“Eighties? Nineteen,” the blond clarifies, downs his shot. “Killed myself a slayer.” He gestures to his jacket, a long, black, leather duster. Not something Raphael would ever be caught, well, _dead_ , in. 

There hasn’t been a slayer in New York in so long, none of the younger Shadowhunters even seem to know they exist. Still, Raphael remembers the terror Nikki Wood filled his clan with, back then.

“Spike.”

“We met, mate?”

“No,” Raphael finishes his own glass of blood, sets it down, shakes his head slightly when the girl sends him a look. “I have heard of your exploits, though.”

Spike grins, slow and pleased. It fades slightly, but there’s still a hint of pride in those blue eyes. “Right, well. Things change.”

“You got souled.” 

Spike looks Raphael over, impressed. “You didn’t.”

“No,” Raphael shrugs, ignores the twinge of envy he feels. He never was souled, and he’s not a daylighter, has no magical ring… He’s just interim chapter president of the New York clan, and lately, he feels as though he’s been failing at even that. “I suppose we can’t all be.” His tone is flat.

“It ain’t that great, mate.” Spike orders another plasma, his speech slurring slightly already as he continues. “She didn’t pick me, in the end. Neither did he. Shoulda—shoulda known that true love wins. He was my _sire_.” 

The words sound too sad for Raphael to be comfortable with. He leans back slightly. Is this vampire upset about a man or a woman? He can’t tell, and decides, abruptly, that he doesn’t care. 

“He’s human now,” Spike continues, and that—that gets Raphael interested again. “Bloody Shanshu. Bloody—champion of the Powers. Bloody pooftah with too much hair gel.” He squints at Raphael’s hair, snorts. Offended. Raphael is too. “It’s all— _bollocks_.”

They come from a different lineage, he and Spike. Have different strengths, restrictions. Raphael knows about Shanshu, though. Every vampire does. Like daylighters, it is— _was_ —a myth. 

“ _Mierda_ ,” Raphael agrees, because, well. It is. 

“You look like your heart is broken, mate.” Spike places a heavy hand on Raphael’s shoulder. “Cheer up.”

Raphael shrugs the touch off. “Speak for yourself.” His heart is absolutely fine. There’s no ache in the pit of his stomach, and he doesn’t have to lie to himself about whose brown eyes he sees when he closes his eyes. 

He doesn't.

Spike takes his next shot, raises his hand for another one. Raphael sees the beta clench her jaw, shake her head. He sighs. Spike isn’t even his mess to clean up, but he still puts a hand around his wrist, tugs it down.

“I think you’ve had enough. Do you have somewhere to sleep today?”

Spike laughs, mirthlessly. “Nah, mate. Today’s the big day. Gonna walk into the sunrise. Maybe this time I stay dead.”

 _Dios mío_ , is this what Raphael has to look forward to? Will his heart someday be so festering he chooses death? “You are coming with me.”

“I don’t even know you.”

“No,” Raphael agrees, “but if you kill yourself on my territory, it’s my problem. Especially now that we’ve been seen talking.” He uses his grip on Spike’s wrist to tug him to his feet as he stands. “I have a place.”

“’m not sleeping with you,” Spike says indignantly, then looks Raphael over, smirks a little. “Well, maybe. You kinda remind me of the pooftah. It’s the hair. High and mighty as the rest of him.” Spike leans in, too close. “Would you mind if I called you Angel?”

“We’re not having sex,” Raphael says, icy. “I’m not interested.” The thought of being called Angel twists his stomach. _You’re no angel, Raphael._ Warm, deep, teasing words, those eyes staring up at him. _Take a walk. We’re done training._

Raphael ignores whatever Spike says next, slips money onto the counter and begins the arduous task of dragging Spike outside and home.

It’s going to be a long day.


	2. The sting always fades eventually

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Did you think I would let a strange vampire into my home without doing my research? After all, we aren’t family.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, look! Another chapter! It happened. Who knows if it will keep happening?! Not me for sure.

Three nights.

Spike has been at the Hotel Dumort for four days, three nights, and Raphael is beginning to regret not letting him walk into the sunrise.

He’s just so miserable. The older vampire spends all of his time drunk, a bottle of something dark and brown—he’s not picky about what—in his hand almost constantly. He lounges with his dirty boots on, sprawled over the golden couches and chairs, and whines. Whines about his good deeds being wasted, whines about being unappreciated, whines about being love’s _bitch_.

All that moping is awful. Raphael has vowed half a dozen times that he will never sink so low. He vows it again when Spike stumbles into the parlor for the fourth evening in a row with fresh vomit down the front of his shirt.

He doesn’t have any clothes of his own; the disadvantage of thwarted suicide, Raphael supposes. He won’t fit anything of Raphael’s, too wiry, and nobody else is offering. Trying to bribe Lily into taking him shopping doesn’t do anything except earn him an unimpressed look.

You _brought him here_ , the look seems to say. _The consequences are_ yours _to deal with_.

Or maybe Raphael is projecting.

“You smell like a medieval brewery,” Raphael says without looking up from his book. 

“Well, maybe I wouldn’t if you let me borrow some clothes so I could go shoppin’.” Spike shoots the words back, throws himself into the chair he’s begun to favor. Raphael looks up, narrows his eyes slightly at the mud-caked, scuffed combat boots. “I don’t fancy smelling like this much myself, mate.”

“Raphael,” the younger vampire corrects in a bored tone. At least mate is better than Mini-Angel, which had been his moniker for the first two days. “Letting you stay here does not make us _mates_.”

“Why are you letting me stay here, anyway?” Spike asks, abruptly self-aware for the first time since Raphael dragged his drunken ass into the hotel. His feet drop to the floor, leaving chunks of mud on the carpet, and he leans forward, elbows on his knees as he studies Raphael, blue eyes clear, thoughtful. 

Raphael thinks he prefers him drunk. He drops his gaze back to his book. “Vampires look after each other.”

“We’re not even the same lineage, Raphael,” Spike points out. “You can’t try the whole ‘we’re family’ speech with me. I know it doesn’t work that way. Hell, even when you are family, it doesn’t work that way. My sire—”

“Which sire?” Raphael snaps the book shut, letting Spike see the cover. _The Order of Aurelius, A History_. “Drusilla? Angelus? It seems you had a complicated siring, William.”

Spike’s eyes go hard. “Spike,” he says, a flash of fang in his sneer. “Where did you get that?”

“Did you think I would let a strange vampire into my home without doing my research? After all, we aren’t _family_.”

“You got a watcher on retainer, or something?”

Raphael rolls his eyes. “Of course not.” He doesn’t mention Magnus. The warlock is the ace up his sleeve, so to speak. “I have other sources.”

“Look, if you wanted me to leave—”

“There’s a sunrise waiting for you?”

Spike shuts his mouth, clears his throat. “You don’t know what I’m going through, mate.”

“Raphael.” He doesn’t say _try me_. Doesn’t think of golden skin and crinkled eyes, the hint of fang against plump, pink lips. “So your heart’s been broken. You’re immortal. You’ll live forever. Find someone new.”

“It ain’t that easy,” Spike protests. “I feel like the soul I went through hell to get for _her_ has been ripped in half by _him_.”

Raphael has pieced together, here and there, what happened. Spike was in love with a slayer. The Slayer. The thrice-dead, thrice-risen. Or maybe Spike was in love with Angel. 

Maybe both.

Raphael doesn’t actually care. 

“Wounds heal,” he says. He hopes. 

No, that’s ridiculous. Wounds heal. The sting always fades eventually. Raphael just needs to stop picking at it. Needs to—

“Bloody hell, I was right.” Spike interrupts his thoughts. “I’m not the only heartbroken vampire sitting here, mate. At least I’m owning up to it.”

Raphael doesn’t dignify Spike’s accusations with a response. What he does is stand, slowly, and stalk out of the room without looking back.

Simon’s room is untouched after Raphael’s initial rage, a disaster of thrown and broken items. He doesn’t need to breathe, but he still holds his breath when he steps inside, desperate to avoid the scent that lingers still.

He finds a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that reads “I KNOW WHERE MY TOWEL IS”. The underwear in the top drawer remains left alone, although he does grab a pair of socks. 

Raphael throws the clothing at Spike without saying a word. The older vampire makes a face. 

“I’m not wearing _these_. These look like Harris’s rejects.”

“You can buy more clothes,” Raphael says, absolutely not bristling at the insult. He agrees with Spike; the clothes are atrocious. “You won’t be let into a store wearing what you have on now.”

Spike’s jaw clenches, but he stands. “Don’t s’pose you got a bob for better threads?”

“You don’t know how to _encanto_?”

“You mean hypnotize? Nah, mate. Never learned.”

Raphael stares at him, swallows. Then he turns away. “Change, then see Stan for money.” 

Spike’s shoulder brushes against his when he leaves the room. Raphael sucks in an unnecessary breath when he thinks it’s safe, shaky and slow.

He still smells Simon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Assuming there's a next chapter... Simon sees Spike in his clothes.  
> Jealous!Simon?
> 
> Comments are appreciated, please?


	3. What?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I just want my shirt back."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So how this works is I take the initial idea and sit down and my fingers vomit the chapter. I have no control over where it goes, that's all the characters. 
> 
> I hope I did Simon justice. He's harder for me to write. (Spike is the hardest.)

There’s a unfamiliar vampire sitting at the bar. 

Normally, Simon wouldn’t really notice. (Except, maybe, to wonder if Raphael knew, but Simon shoves that thought aside.) He hasn’t even been a creature of the night for a full year—although sometimes it feels like much longer than that has passed—and he knows he doesn’t know every other vampire in the city. Avoids the ones he does know, because they’re weirdly worshipful and threatening all at once.

How much of that is Raphael’s (still in place?—he can’t tell, with Raphael, the man still brought him blood and helped him with his family, with the cops, despite _everything_ , because Simon _keeps screwing up_ ) kill order, and how much is the desire to know how he became a daylighter, Simon doesn’t know or want to know. Being out during the day makes it easier to avoid them, but tonight, he’d wanted a drink, wanted to talk to Maia, to get distracted from the mess inside his own head.

But there’s an unfamiliar vampire sitting at the bar, and he’s wearing a faded green t-shirt with the number 42 on the back like it’s a jersey, and Simon knows, _knows_ , that if he turns around, the writing on the front will say the wearer knows where his towel is. Knows it because it’s a limited edition, only 500 sold, bought at a stupidly expensive price at ComiCon, t-shirt.

 _Simon’s_ t-shirt.

“What the _hell_?”

Simon means to mutter, and maybe he manages to, but he’s in a bar full of people with supernaturally enhanced senses, so more than one head swivels to look at him. Not the guy who’s wearing _Simon’s shirt_ , though. 

Simon’s shirt, and Simon’s jeans, and they still smell like him, kind of, which means that anyone with a working nose in the Hunter’s Moon who knows him knows that apparently _Raphael is giving away his clothes, now_.

There’s a burning in Simon’s chest, getting brighter when he realizes that must have been the reason for the odd look Maia sent him when he walked through the door. 

His hands are shaking slightly.

“What the hell?” He says it again, and this time he means to say it louder. The blond in his shirt still doesn’t turn around, like he can’t feel the way Simon is staring at him. Glaring. 

He hopes he’s glaring. That’s the only acceptable expression to be wearing in public. Pissed off. _Angry_. Yeah, Simon can use that. He marches forward, despite the fact that every eye in the place feels like it’s on him. 

_Downworlders and their love of drama and gossip_ , he thinks, bitter like the taste in his mouth, and grabs the other vampire’s arm, jerking him around slightly. 

“Hey, what’s the big idea—” the blond says, face shifting into something lumpy and monstrous like Simon has never seen a vampire’s face get before. Maybe the old Simon would have yelped, backed up, started fumbling through apologies—the way he’d jerked him had nearly knocked over the shots of plasma and rum sitting in front of him. 

“That’s my shirt,” Simon says instead, hisses, his own fangs coming out a little. His hands drop, balling into fists at his sides.

The vampire’s face melts back into something human, bright blue eyes and delicate features, a hint of a sneer or a smirk or both. He scoffs.  
“Not anymore, yeah? Mini-Angel said I could have it.”

Mini— _what_? The burning in his stomach is hotter, now, and Simon narrows his eyes.

“It wasn’t _Raphael’s_ to give away.”

“Was at his shoddy hotel,” the vampire says, tossing back the shot of plasma, then the rum. He shakes his head, makes a face. Simon’s gaze flickers to the empty glasses, to Maia’s sympathetic face, and then back to the blond. “Been there almost a week and haven’t seen you about, so I think it _was_ his. And now it’s mine.”

“Dumort isn’t shoddy,” Simon replies automatically, defensively. G—He wants to hit this asshole. Where is _that_ urge coming from? He’s pissed, but violence isn’t—he really doesn’t—Simon swallows. “That’s my shirt, and I want it back.”

The blond drags his gaze down Simon, slow and, well, filthy. It makes Simon _feel_ filthy. “Well, I’m sure we could work somethin’ out,” he says, leaning in. Barely-there self-control is the only thing that keeps Simon from flinching back. “You got somewhere you could take it back, baby Xan?”

“My name is Simon.” Simon sucks in a breath, immediately wishes he hadn’t. “And no, I don’t. Just give me my shirt.”

This vampire, wearing his shirt. He smells like Raphael. 

Not strongly, but—enough. Enough.

Simon’s fists ball tighter, claws pricking his palms. He watches the blond vampire’s nostrils flair, his pupils dilating slightly, as blood beads up.

“Spike.”

“I don’t care.”

Spike—what the hell kind of name is that, anyway?—snorts. “Sure you do. It’s all over you, how much you care.”

“I just want my shirt back.”

“Bad breakup?” Spike sighs. Bafflingly, his expression seems to soften. “Hell, I guess you’d be me.”

“What?” Simon squawks, and he does back away, then. “Look, Mist—Dud—Spike. I just want my shirt back.”

“So you keep saying.” Faster than Simon can blink, there’s a bruising hand wrapped around one of his wrists. The bar gets quiet, except for a few low growls. Spike seems unperturbed. “At least a dozen apocalypses under my belt,” he says, a little too loudly. “Killed two slayers. Was drunker than this.”

Simon doesn’t even know what slayers _are_ , but the growling stops. He can feel the uncomfortable shift in the room, people looking away. Except for Maia, who looks—scared. Simon catches her eye, shakes his head slightly at her. 

“Great track record. Fascinating.” Terrifying, apparently. Simon tugs at the grip on his wrist. “Let me go. I have friends—” 

“Where?”

Simon’s mouth clicks shut, shoulders slumping slightly. Spike stands, jerking Simon with him. He doesn’t bother with money—which, _rude_ —before he’s dragging Simon out of the bar. “C’mon, baby Xan.”

Simon trips over his own feet as he’s tugged along. As soon as they’re outside, he starts babbling. 

“You know, I don’t even really like that shirt,” he says, “You—you can keep it, okay? Whatever Raphael wants you to do to me…” That has to be it, right? Raphael is finally tired of being lenient, used Simon’s clothes, and this guy is probably some sort of assassin, that’s why he’s—why he’s letting Simon’s wrist go and wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

“Relax, would you? We’re just going shoppin’.”

“I— _what_?”

“Simon, init?” Spike smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling slightly. “You remind me of one of the most annoying humans I’ve ever met.”

“Gee, thanks,” Simon says drily. “Is that why you’re taking me shopping?” _Run away_ , his instincts are screaming at him. _Far and fast._

“You want your shirt back, don’t you?”

“I— _what_?”

“Raphael,” Simon flinches slightly at the name, “sent me out for new clothes. These are just loaners.”

“Loaners.” _**What?**_

“He dresses like Angel,” Spike rolls his eyes, conspiratorially. Simon’s pretty sure his mouth is hanging open. “Wasn’t gonna wear _his_ clothes. Bloody broody…” Spike trails off, grumbling.

There’s an ache in his voice that Simon…well, he kinda gets it. He relaxes slightly. 

“Right?” He grins at Spike, just a little. “‘Oh, I have a responsibility, I can’t have any fun, must be serious all the time.’ Like, c’mon, dude. _Lighten up_.”

Spike throws his head back, and laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If there is a next time...  
> Simon and Spike go shopping! Raphael is absolutely _**not worried**_ when he gets the news that Spike dragged Simon out of the bar.
> 
> Comments are appreciated, please?


End file.
